Sky Ferreira in The Witching Hour, A Fashion Editorial

Electro Pop teen sensation is one way to describe her. Latter day Debbie Harry might be another. Sky Ferreira is an LA girl, she took opera singing lessons, she was discovered on MySpace. She’s not on the cover of Vogue that might be too obvious. She’s more downtown, more elusive, kind of cooler than that. Instead, her wide, pretty face with its high cheek bones hinting at her Native American heritage has appeared in the glossies of the cool kids Jalouse, Dazed & Confused, Interview, Purple. And it’s that hair that really gets you, that mass of blond and brown tangled, wavy, mad, beautiful hair. You couldn’t buy a better signature. So go ahead and add model to that list of signifiers.

The singular focus, though, has always been on music, on becoming an artist. “I just always knew I was gonna be one. Never had to think about it or about what I wanted to do, I never doubted it,” Ferreira explains. “When I was little I’d just like sing in front of the mirror, practice…a lot. And I’d sing along to everything and all I did was listen to music all the time and then I would just like learn every song that I heard even if I didn’t like it, I’d learn it.”

Born in 1992, Ferreira is a mere 18 years old and if you do the math, her influences are right on target. The singer’s particular brand of energetic club beats might make you think of five girls who dominated the late 90s. “The first group I ever heard, really without my parents’ influence, was the Spice Girls. Yeah, Baby Spice. I used to dress like Baby Spice. I actually still do (laughs). I still dress like a Spice Girl sometimes,” she says.

Uninhibited and young, still building a brand, Ferreira is a bit guarded, but comes off decidedly sweet. A true child of the 90s, it’s not a surprise that her debut album, dropping in the fall, is titled “As If!” “I love Cher Horowitz obviously, I also like Alicia Silverstone in The Crush,” Ferreira explains. She also counts Kurt Cobain and Drew Barrymore in Poison Ivy as influences. It’s the spirit of a rockstar, a little gritty, maybe a bit dark kind of like the brooding, almost supernatural phenomenon she exudes in “The Witching Hour,” shot by Hugh Lippe and styled by Martha Violante.

So what’s next for the newcomer? “I wanna be successful, not famewise but like, I want my records out and people to like it and stuff and then I don’t know- living in a one bedroom apartment instead of a room… that’s what I’m going to aim for right now.” Something tells me Kurt, and maybe even Baby Spice, would be proud.

Featuring: Sky Ferreira, IMG
Photographer: Hugh Lippe
Stylist: Martha Violante
Illustrations by Bernadette Pascua
Hair by Rolando Beauchamp for Bumble and Bumble, Community
Make up: Asami Matsuda using Chanel at The Magnet Agency
Manicurist: Kim Chiu, Mark Edward Inc.
Photographer’s Assistant: Roberto Patella
Retoucher: Shane Lyons
Sylist’s Assistant: Ethan Benjamin
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